1. Field
Methods and apparatuses consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to an image forming apparatus, a license server, a terminal apparatus, a method for installing an application, and a method for providing an application file, and more particularly, to an image forming apparatus, a license server, a terminal apparatus, a method for installing an application, and a method for providing an application file, which can install an application using an application file containing an activation key.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus refers to an apparatus that prints printing data generated by a terminal apparatus, such as a computer, on recording paper. Examples of such an image forming apparatus are copiers, printers, facsimile machines, or multifunction peripherals (MFPs) complexly realizing the functions of the aforementioned devices in a single device.
In recent years, it has become possible to install a variety of applications capable of extending functions of the image forming apparatus in the image forming apparatus. In addition, when installing an application, a license activating method is used in order to activate a specific function or prevent illegal copying.
Since the license activating method activates the application using an activation key that is generated using unique information of the image forming apparatus, the activation key cannot be used to activate a license if it is used in another image forming apparatus.
There have been three license activating methods in the related art as follows: The first method uses a license server, the second method is a license off line method, and the third method is a universal serial bus (USB) license off line method.
The first method which uses the license server is used when the image forming apparatus is connected to the license server. If a user selects an application to be installed, the image forming apparatus receives a license key for the corresponding application from the user, provides the received license key and unique information of the image forming apparatus to the license server, receives an activation key from the license server in response to the license key and the unique information of the image forming apparatus, and activates the application using the received activation key.
The license off line method is applied to an image forming apparatus that cannot access a license server because a network environment is not established. Apparatus information of the image forming apparatus is collected by a user, and an activation key to be used for activation at the image forming apparatus is manually issued. A license key and the activation key are inputted to the image forming apparatus and are used to activate a license.
The USB license off line method is also applied to an image forming apparatus that cannot access a license server because a network environment is not established. In this method, apparatus information of the image forming apparatus in which an application is to be installed is collected by a user and an activation key to be used for activation at the image forming apparatus is manually issued. The issued activation key is stored in a USB and the USB in which the activation key is stored is connected to the image forming apparatus, so that a license is activated.
The related-art license activating methods described above has the following problems. Specifically, the first method, which uses the license server, should connect the image forming apparatus and the license server to each other. However, if the image forming apparatus is not allowed to be connected to the license server, the license is not activated. In particular, in a general Business-to-Business (B2B) environment, the image forming apparatus is not allowed to access the external license server for reasons of security. Therefore, this method is not efficiently used and the user suffers inconvenience of having to perform license activation for every image forming apparatus.
In a B2B environment in which an application should be installed in a plurality of image forming apparatuses, the second license off line method suffers from problems in that activation keys for the image forming apparatuses should be inputted one by one and it takes a long time to install an application.
The third USB off line method has problems in that it takes long time to install an application in a B2B environment in which an application should be installed in a plurality of image forming apparatuses, and that this method could not be used in a situation where a USB cannot be used for reasons of security.